


36 Questions

by MissandMarauder



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Pining, Theomione, There will be more don't worry!, Two Shot, poor theo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 07:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12476068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissandMarauder/pseuds/MissandMarauder
Summary: Theo's last year at school drags by as he watches the girl he can't stop thinking about go about her life, completely unaware of his feelings for her.





	36 Questions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KnitKnitRead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnitKnitRead/gifts).



> Happiest of birthdays to one of my favourite people in the fanfic world, KnitKnitRead! This little snippet of what was going to be a one-shot is for you! Hopefully, the rest of it will be posted soon. :) Thanks for being the best alpha reader and fellow fangirl a writer could ask for! Thank you, also for the endless supply of plunnies. Even when I really don't need them. ;)
> 
> Beta thanks to the lovely Mahawna! She's the bomb dot com. :)

Otters and  _Amortentia_

N.E.W.T. Level Potions was by far Theo's least favourite class. Not only was the new professor - a barely-qualified French ponce from the continent - a bore, he was also paired up with Gryffindor's Princess, Hermione Granger. When those two factors worked together to create a situation in which they were brewing  _Amortentia_  to revise the process before the exams, Theo was well and truly doomed.

It was bad enough that he had to watch her throw her curls into a messy bun and observe the graceful curve of her slender neck as she prepared ingredients or peered into the simmering cauldron. That, combined with the way she bit her lip in concentration, would be enough to drive any straight bloke batty, and Theo was quickly on his way to losing his mind. But this was worse. The smell wafting up from the completed potion was nothing acceptable like flowers or citrus or vanilla.

No. To Theo, it smelled of parchment and cinnamon and positively... _Granger_.

He tried to ignore it. Honestly, he did. But it confirmed all his deepest fears and desires in one fell swoop, and his brain wouldn't let him forget it, even as he heard Hermione quietly get Weasley's attention to tell him the potion smelled like  _him_  - probably some nauseating blend of sweaty Quidditch jerseys and poverty.

The little bud of hope that had blossomed in Theo's chest was summarily crushed before it even had a chance to bloom.

He stormed from the room, almost as furious with the situation as he was with himself. She called after him, but he ignored her concern.

The last two months of the school year dragged by in a series of painful thoughts of what could have been and hours upon hours of revisions, homework, and exams. He still sat next to her in Potions, enduring the reminders of his haunting experience with  _Amortentia_  every time she flipped her hair over her shoulder or leaned across him to grab a particular ingredient. They even studied together, along with some of their friends, since they had so many classes in common. Spending so much time in each other's company meant that Theo had heard no less than six times that Weasley had made a demeaning comment about Hermione or her brilliant brain or need to study. Theo loved -  _ahem, admired_ \- Hermione's mind most of all and positively saw red each time the red-headed wanker saw fit to tease her about it. Even as brainy as Theo was, Hermione held a slight advantage over him in nearly every class, though she accepted his help with the occasional translation for Ancient Runes. He felt smug and needed and absolutely  _wonderful_ every time she asked. Theo told himself it was only because her questions meant he was better than her at  _something_ , but he knew the truth. If this was the only way the girl he couldn't get out of his head would ever need him, he'd take it.  _Gladly_ , he'd accept it. He stayed up late many nights studying in an effort to stay on her level - or possibly break even with her so that she wouldn't toss him aside as she had the useless Gryffindor boys when crunch time came before the exams.

They both did brilliantly, of course, receiving nearly perfect marks on every single essay, spell, and potion. Theo was next in line for the Potions practical when Hermione finished her own, and she surprised him by throwing her arms around him and whispering, "Thank you!" in his ear. He was dazed and tingled pleasantly all over when the proctor from the Ministry called him back to brew his own potions. There was an extra swagger to his step as he moved forward, the pink tinge to his cheeks causing the elderly man supervising his brewing to wink and chuckle.

He hadn't seen her for the rest of the day, but he just assumed she was partying with the rest of the Gryffindor seventh years or getting some much-deserved rest now that her N.E.W.T.s were finally finished. That single act of affection from Hermione had filled up places in his heart he didn't even realise were empty, causing his thoughts to venture into optimistic territory. He sat under a tree near the Black Lake, twirling his wand and buzzing enough from the high of Hermione's touch that he didn't even want to go back to the Slytherin common room to join Draco and the others for drinks.

If he let his thoughts venture that way, he would remember that the last time he'd been hugged with true affection was by his mother when he was just a little boy, maybe five years old. Thoros had never approved of public displays of affection, even simple hugs between his wife and son, and Theo had cried until the well ran dry on the night she died, Thoros towering over her, forbidding any contact between Elena and Theo. She'd sent him a tiny wink, all she could muster as the last dregs of life drained from her body, just before Theo was whisked from the room by a house elf.

Shaking the unhappy memories away, Theo recentered his thoughts on Hermione. She'd been all soft curves and slender waist, arms tight around his neck as she hugged him close and whispered in his ear. The thought made his heart beat faster even then, with the sun long gone and the moonlight rippling out over the lake.

It wasn't just the racing pulse of lust, though, no. He was familiar with that and the kind of "locker talk" that Draco and some of the others took part in. It had never been his style, so he'd buried his nose a little further into a book and tried not to listen too hard to the things that were said. They all fell short to the very real girl who sat next to him in Potions, all wild hair, golden-brown eyes, and swottiness.

No, this feeling wandered over into the territory of caring. Affection. Unrequited love, if he was going to be truly honest with himself.

That little epiphany wasn't the point of his adventure out to the lake, though. He was there for an experiment.

Hermione would be proud.

Twirling his wand, he honed his thoughts into that perfect moment - where the world had fallen away save for the two of them - and clearly intoned, " _Expecto Patronum!"_

The first time wasn't perfect, but a stream of white mist shot out of the tip of his wand. He whooped quietly. That was far better than anything he'd ever managed to cast before. Hermione had adamantly insisted that he could cast a Patronus if he chose to do so. He'd been sure that he would always fail, either because of his distinct lack of happy memories or the fact that he was the son of a deranged Death Eater. For all he knew, he was carrying some strain of insanity or evil inside his soul that would never allow magic as pure and good as a Patronus to take form. It was better not to get his hopes up.

Until now.

Closing his eyes and willing his racing heart to slow, Theo focused harder. He drew on the memory of the time she championed him and the other Slytherins against their new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor. The way she looked when the windows were dark and they used two lanterns to study late into the night. The curve of her neck as she brewed a potion. Her little giggle when she finally got something right that had been evading her. A million other moments that proved that she was beautiful and wonderful and  _good._ And then the hug. Filled with every happy memory of Hermione that he could muster, Theo cast again.

" _Expecto Patronum!_ "

In his excitement, he'd forgotten to open his eyes. A bright light burst forth behind his closed lids, and he reeled as his eyes sprang open, back colliding with the rough bark of the tree behind him and knocking the wind from his lungs.

He didn't care.

Lazily swimming about in the air in front of him was an otter.

It looked just like Hermione's Patronus but perhaps a little bigger, a little less exuberant in its movements, a little more  _Theo._

His hand rose to his mouth involuntarily, shaking slightly as his cool skin pressed against his lips. A choked sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob escaped his throat, but all he could do was watch in wonder as his Patronus - one he shared with  _her_ \- dove and swam and twirled until it faded into the night.

XxxX

The next few years were hard on Theo. His moment by the lake was pushed aside in his thoughts when he saw no change forthcoming between Hermione and Weasley. They were inseparable, as always; fighting, as usual; and all wrong for each other. He knew he wasn't the only one who could see it. Occasionally he'd see other students glare at Weasley for belittling Hermione's intellect or Hermione for treating Weasley like a child.

He did  _act_ like a child, in her defence.

The pair stayed together as Weasley joined the Auror training program with Potter while Hermione decided to accept an internship in the Ministry's legal department, just a few offices down from her boyfriend and best friend. Theo had always known he wanted to work in law, so he found himself stationed at a desk just across the hall from Hermione's own.

How did the saying go? ' _Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?'_ Not that Hermione was an enemy to anything save his poor heart. She was the nicest person he worked with, especially since so many of them couldn't see past his parentage and his House at school.

As the years stretched on, and Theo distanced himself enough to stay friendly with Granger without seeing more of her than his emotions could handle, he reached a point of being able to pretend his feelings didn't exist anymore. That she didn't look particularly fetching with her hair up and in that navy blue Muggle pencil skirt contraption she favoured. That his heart didn't leap out of his chest and dance down the hallway and Apparate away without him the day he heard that she and Weasley had finally broken up - for good.

He'd bidden his time after that, unwilling to play his hand too soon after they'd split up. It was pointless to try wooing her when the pain was still so fresh. Even with an amicable split, like theirs had been, there needed to be a time of grieving before either party made an attempt to move on.

Weasley, of course, completely ignored that rule and started dating one of the girls on the Auror force almost immediately. Granger had been artificially chipper for the first few days but slowly returned to her usual self. Theo wanted to swoop in and save her, make her smile, prove to her that Weasley was a wanker and that there was someone far better suited to the brightest witch of their age waiting right across the hall.

But that was something she'd have to see for herself, in her own way and her own time.

Theo's determination to let her come to him crumbled when his stack of Monday morning newspapers offered up the perfect segue for convincing Hermione to give him a chance.

An experiment.


End file.
